The Return of Physiognomy: Interpretive Art or Pseudo-Science?

Physiognomy — the judgement of character according to appearance — is experiencing a renaissance. On Twitter, the phrase ‘physiognomy remains undefeated’ is used (I’m assuming tongue-in-cheek) frequently. Although it is widely considered a pseudo-science, its revival, in certain circles, coincides with other ‘post-truth’ practices that privilege intuition over fact.

Physiognomy can be traced back to antiquity ‘where it originated as a branch of medicine, which is based on the inference of visible signs and symptoms’ (Baumbach). The earliest extant text on the topic is the Physiognomonica, falsely-attributed to Aristotle. In her essay, ‘The Beginnings of Physiognomy in Ancient Greece’, Maria Michela Sassi writes that, in the Physiognomonica, which dates back to 300 BCE, the discipline ‘deals with the physical affections that can be treated as signs of the ‘dispositions of the soul’’. Thus, the diviner’s task was ‘to read the will of the gods in the signs on the body’: ‘The human body, which was created…